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“A dragon. The last dragon,” she said meaningfully. “Its name was Omnamshacry. A legend amongst my people.”
“Malwae, now! If you bore my mother any love at all, you’ll do something to save him,” she hissed.
“The gods must be obeyed!” Her voice was a rasp a moment ago, but now it was all thunder and judgment. Her words boomed over the great hall. “The gods must be obeyed, lest House De Barra fall!”
“This Kingfisher does not die by your hand. Not today,” Malwae droned. “The Kingfisher shall not die by your hand.”
“The pendant,” Malwae interrupted. “It must be returned.” “That pendant contains powerful magic. It doesn’t belong around the neck of a treacherous dog. It belongs to me. I’ll be cold in the ground before I give it back to this… this…”
His haunted expression promised pain, and blood, and death. And he was looking right at the king. Or perhaps it was the dead dragon’s skull that elicited his hate. I couldn’t tell.
“Even in times of peace, the Fae are always at war. There are those among our ranks that might pretend to be your friend, but often they’re hiding knives behind their smiles, ready to sink them into your back. You’d do well to remember that.”
I am Rusarius, librarian, newly reappointed master of this domain.
“Then I think it’s safe to assume that she is an Alchemist, wouldn’t you?” Rusarius said, raising his eyebrows at Everlayne. “It’s—no! Well, it’s not that simple. The Alchemists were all Fae—”
“Nimerelle is a formidable sword. Alchimeran. A much-lauded, storied weapon of the ancients. It’s an honor to even look upon—”
“The real war with Sanasroth is killing members of our court, your court, every single day.” “The last time I fought in that war, a city burned to the ground. I think I’ve shed enough blood for Yvelia, Brother.”
“All right, Oshellith.
“Our ancestors were cursed millennia ago. As a result, we ended up with these,” he said, gesturing to his canines. “We used them to drink your kind dry. We drained you by the millions before the blood curse was lifted.
I’m the Bane of Gillethrye, remember? The Black Knight?” “You’re my brother,” Everlayne hissed. “Though I sometimes wish you weren’t!”
“An Oshellith is a type of butterfly,” he called as he went. “Osha for short. They hatch, live, and die all in one day. The cold kills them very fast.
“The quicksilver itself is volatile. Some of our elders believe it possesses a low level of sentience.
“My mother gave me this pendant, this relic,” he clarified, “when I was eleven. The night before we left for the Winter Palace. She knew I’d have need of it. Later, when I came of age and joined Belikon’s army, I was called upon to travel between Yvelia and the other realms because my pendant was one of the most powerful. To
At some point, the quicksilver was discovered along with the other realms its pathways connected, and all manner of chaos ensued afterward.
But Common Fae is spoken by all of the courts as a shared, well, common tongue. When the first Fae traveled to your realm, the humans there spoke a different language altogether.
In Zilvaren, at least. Zilvaren had Madra, and your queen has always spoken Common Fae. She served as an anchor to our language. Perhaps in other realms, languages and alphabets have changed.”
“We don’t know how she did it, but yes, Madra should have died centuries ago. It must be some form of magic, but we have no clue who performed it for her or why.
That information was closely guarded by our kind for generations. But you don’t need to be Fae or possess any special gift in order to close the doors between our realms. The sword will do it for you.
There was a voice. A million voices. Annorath mor!
She’d squawked when he’d thrown me unceremoniously down onto my bed and snarled, “Bad human,” at me.
“No. My mother was married to a Southern lord before she married my father. She had Fisher with her first husband. When Fisher was ten, the king sent his father on a mission to Zilvaren. He never returned. That’s when the gateways were stilled. The king said that Finran, Fisher’s father, was responsible for the quicksilver stilling and declared him a traitor to the Fae—”
He didn’t want Kingfisher as his heir by marriage, but it took a long time for my mother to fall pregnant again. Fae children are a rare gift. Most couples are lucky if they have even one child. Belikon thought Fisher had ‘used my mother up.’ He actually said that once.
“I’m also a fan of aggressive foreplay. It’ll be a fun reminder.”
“You could at least say hello before you start eye-fucking me.”
The crest on the front of it was almost worn smooth, but I could still make out the design: two crossed swords wrapped in thin vines.
“I don’t hate your kind. I’m just disappointed by how breakable you are. If I held you down and fucked you the way I’m imagining fucking you right now, I doubt that you’d survive it.”
“I go and I try to get your brother. You help me and assist me in any way I ask you to, and you do as you’re told. You agree to this pact?”
“I tracked your bloodline. It led me right to him. I asked him who he was. He said he was Hayden Fane. Ergo, I brought you Hayden Fane.”
“Unless you’re paying very close attention, what you mean to agree to and what you actually agree to are often two very different things in Fae, Little Osha.
Always pay attention to the fine print. The devil’s in the details.
“What do you mean, shades?” “Y’know. Echoes. What remains of a creature after it dies in distress.”
“I’m taking you to the borderlands, Osha. A small fiefdom at the very edge of Yvelian territory. A place called Cahlish.”
“My father and Belikon had a long history. He saw what Belikon was planning long before he murdered the royal family and stole the crown for himself. He took precautions and warded his lands so that neither Belikon nor any of his supporters could cross into them. He was powerful, and his wards were strong. They remain as solid as ever. Belikon can travel to the borders of Cahlish, but he can’t enter. As long as I live and carry on my father’s line, he never will.”
“Nimerelle is the only thing that’s stood between Yvelia and ever-lasting darkness for the past four hundred fucking years!”
Carrion gave me a saccharine smile. “And there was me thinking you weren’t infatuated with me anymore. I have to say, I would have preferred to stay in Zilvaren, though. I was about to close a spectacular deal that would have made me a very rich man.”
His skin was pale apart from a single, stark black rune visible between the base of his skull and his shirt collar. It was complex, all interlocking fine lines, loops, and curls. Most of the runes I’d seen on the Fae had been ugly-looking things, but this…
“There are a lot of fire sprites here. Water sprites. Air sprites. Not so many earth sprites.
“Why is silver in such short supply here if you have all this gold?” “Because silver serves a very specific purpose here. We need as much of it as we can lay our hands on.”
“As for the fire sprites, they like humans. Far more than they like the Fae.” “Right. They treat you like you hung the moon.” “I’m different,” he said, as if that were obvious. “Archer helped raise me. After my parents, he was the first of the lesser Fae to hold me. He has a soft spot for me, I suppose.”
“Pheromones are signal flares to our noses, Little Osha. I was rushing, so I didn’t differentiate between blood and sex at the time. But when I walked into that room earlier, and your friend Carrion mentioned your little obsession with him—”
“Sanasrothian foot soldiers,” he answered tightly. “Feeders. They are the reason why we need silver so badly.
“Irrín?” “The war camp. On the other side of the mountains.” He nodded to the window. “They act as a barrier between this place and the carnage on the other side.”
All we know is that when the god swords went silent and abandoned the rest of the Fae who carried them, Nimerelle stayed. At a cost. The blade used to shine brilliant silver. As the centuries have passed, it’s blackened and tarnished. But Nimerelle has stayed. The spirit of that sword or the magic inside it, whatever you choose to believe it is, has stayed. No matter what, it’s never left him.”
His heart was racing, the space between beats negligible. Nothing like the slow, steady beat he’d shown me back in the forge at the palace.
“I can’t trust anything,” he whispered breathlessly. And that was when he let me go.
The suggestive way he grinned at me made me think he could smell what I’d been up to as well, but that wasn’t possible. Our human noses weren’t that sensitive.
